28.4.05

because it is not readable:

The Shiv Sena believes that all men are beastly, or ought to be so. At least, that is the inference we must draw from an articles in Saamna, the Sena mouthpiece, which in effect says that by wearing so called provocative clothes such as hipster jeans and mini skirts , women invite rape. The article was provoked by the recent sexual assault on a 17 year old girl by a Mumbai police constable. While describing the assault as "inhuman", the article deplored the competition amongst youngsters to wear revealing garments and warned " if a man is incited by such clothes who can one blame?" The Saamna article which raises fundamental questions , goes beyond the Sena tradition of moral policing, as exemplified by the banning of dance bars in Maharashtra.

By implying that rape is nothing more or less than a violent, conditioned response in males, who on seeing an attractive female lose all reason and restraint, the Saamna argument robs men of the basic human attribute of volition, or free will, and renders them into animals. The retort to that old and unconscionable legitimisation of rape, that "WOMEN ASK FOR IT" is the question " Even they should do so, why cant men refuse?"

Now Saamna tells us why men can't help but acquiesce helplessly in rape. They are animals who can't be trusted to control themselves.

Now it's upto the women ,is it, to impose self restrictions to avoid falling prey to men's primal passions? If this is the line of what very loosely might be called reasoning it is an obnoxious insult to men, it is the source of grievous injury to women. By telling women that they must adhere to a male dictated code of public appearance and behaviour , the Sena in a single stroke is defranchising them by denying them their constituional right of freedom of choice. choice is the basic building block of political and economic emancipation; of democracy and the free market. Threatened by incremental freedoms, social and financial, that Indian women are claiming as their own, the retrograde male authoritarianism can strike backonly through use, or threat of use, of brute force. That's what the Sena is indirectly telling us: That in order to preserve our cultural mores, men must selectively unleash their savagery and turn themselves into beasts. Any takers, of either gender, for that preposterous proposition?